瓦尔登湖

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A special acknowledgement should be shown to my supervisor, Jing Xiya, who has taught me how to write the paper. I want to thank her for her great patience and generosity. She helped me in all the stages of writing this paper, without her patient instruction, this paper couldn’t have reached its present form.

My gratitude also extends to the professors and teachers at the English department. Besides, I would like to extend my heart-felt thanks to my friends and my classmates, who helped me a lot in writing this paper.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Introduction (1)

Chapter 2 The Influence of Traditional Chinese Culture to Thoreau (2)

2.1 The Social Background of Creation of Walden (2)

2.2 Thoreau’s Reception of Four Books and Confucianism (3)

2.3 The comparison of Thoreau and Chuang Tzu (through fish) (5)

Chapter 3 Similarities and Differences (5)

3.1 Similarities (6)

3.1.1 The Most Important and Meaningful Part of Their Conception

---The Integration of Nature and Man (6)

3.1.2 Harmony and great aesthetic value (6)

3.1.3 Spiritual value (6)

3.2 Differences (6)

3.2.1 The social background (6)

3.2.2 The differences of their conception of nature (7)

Chapter 4 Conclusion (8)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Comparative study on Thoreau and T ao Yuan Ming

FANG Wei

Abstract: Walden is one of the important works written by Thoreau, a famous American thinker and essayist. It is regarded as a representative work in American natural literature. Its ideological contents, aesthetic value and genre, which passes through time and space and influences the generations to come. Chinese Eastern Jin Dynasty's Tao Yuan Ming, Mr. Wu Liu, is politely called pastoral poet's first ancestor. His representative works Arcadia Records,which elaborated the integration of nature and man and so on, has the same theme with Thoreau's thoughts. This thesis aims to systematically analyze and discuss the similarities and differences of views of nature between Tao Yuan Ming and Thoreau, who came from different countries, lived at different times, with different writing styles, make preparation for seeking spiritual and realistic value.

Keywords: literature of nature；aesthetic value ；views of nature；spiritual and realistic value.

摘要《瓦尔登湖》是美国著名思想家、散文家梭罗的重要作品,被誉为美国自然文学的代表作。它的思想内容、审美价值、文体风格都有其穿越时空、影响后人的魅力。中国东晋的陶渊明，号五柳先生，被尊称为田园诗人的鼻祖。其代表作《桃花源记》所阐述的天人合一等观点，都与梭罗的思想有异曲同工之妙。本文旨在梳理与探索陶渊明与梭罗这两位不同国度、不同时代、不同写作风格的作家自然观的异同，寻求其精神与现实价值。

关键词:自然文学；审美；自然观；精神与现实价值

Chapter 1 Introduction

American transcendentalist Thoreau has contributed a lot to American literature and has won the respect from many people. Because of his experiment of tasting a life style, which represents returning to nature; because of the expression of “the integration of nature and man”; because of his digestion of both American and ancient Chinese